US.-Mexican Boundary. Offers a Ready Laboratory for the Observation of Many
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O C V M E N T BIN Pe ED 032 520 AL 001 964 By-Ornstein. Jacob -Languige Varieties Along the US.-MexicanBorder. Pub Date Sep 69 Note-27p.; Paper presented to the Sociolinguistics Section of the 2nd InternationalCongress of Applied Linguistics. Cambridge. England, September812. 1969. ERRS Price MF -S025 HC -S1 A5 Descriptors *Bilingualism. Dialect Studies.*English (Second Language). Language Skills.Mexican Americans. Multilingualism. Nonstandard Dialects. SocialDialects. 'Sociolinguistics. 'Spanish Speaking The US. Southwest andparticularly the region alongthe 1000-mile long US.-Mexican boundary. offersa ready laboratory for the observation ofmany phases of multilingualism andmulticulturalism. The author feels.however. that the rich sociolinguistic material of thearea has suffered from over-simplification andneglect. Very few synchronic studies alongmodern linguistic lines haveappeared. He believes that the Bilingual Education Actof 1968 and the SociolinguisticStudy on Southwest Spanish. supported by the Universityof Texas at El Paso's ResearchInstitute. will help change the situation. Afterexplaining briefly the aims of theSociolinguistic Study. the author presentsa survey of the historical evolution of thestudy of multilingualism. He also suggestsa schema of the language situation of theSouthwest. (D0) N i i 4-. U.S. DEPARTMENT Of NEMTN. EDUCATION i WElfilf OffICE Of EDUCATION THIS DOCUMENT NIS 1111 KNOWN EXACTLY AS HUMID FROM 1111 PERSON 01 0161111111011 0M6INATIN6 IT.POINTS Of VIEW OR OPINIONS STATED DO NOT NECESSAINS INPIRSINT OFFICIAL OFFICE Of EDUCATION POSITION 01 POKY. LANGUAGE VARIETIES ALONG THE U.S.-MEXICAN BORDER* By: Jacob Ornstein, University of Texas-El Paso (For Sociolinguistics Section, Second International Congress of Applied Linguistics, Cambridge Univ., England (AI A) Sept. 8-12, 1969) The U. S. Southwest and particularly the region along the 1000- mile long U.S.-Mexican boundary, offers a ready laboratory for the observation of many phases of multilingualism and multiculturalism. Indeed, several of my Southwestern colleagues and a few from else- where are presenting papers on this general theme at this very con- ference. Unfortunately, however, the rich sociolinguistic material of the area has suffered from over-simplification and cavalier treat- ment, with a predilection for the colorful and bizarre, or from out- right neglect. Very few, indeed, almost no synchronic studies along modern linguistic lines have appeared, and Aurelio Espinosa's Estudios sobre 1 el espaflol de Nuevo 144jico, completed several decades ago, still re- mains the only exhaustive description, save for scattered articles and unpublished theses and dissertations. A vast number of socio- economic and educational studies exists on the hispano, anglo, and Indian ethnic groups, but few of these have taken the linguistic component into consideration. AL001 96 4 2 Political developments have taken a hand in altering this picture, as significant legislation has been enacted, including the Bilingual Education Act of 1968, to improve the lot of the minorities, a large percentage of which communicates in something other than standard language. The Southwest speech communities include some three and a half million Spanish-English speakers, and a far lesser number of Indians, most of whom are in varying degrees not only bilingual or trilingual, but also bidialectal or even diglossic. Educational and social planners have not fail- ed to call upon linguists to help them with the multi-faceted communication problems involved, but all too often the latter have 2 had to operate as "artists", relying upon intuition rather than any available body of scientific data. The Sociolinguistic Study on Southwest Spanish, a modest project supported by this University's Research Institute, has thus far been able to achieve little more than to collect pilot data, develop some tentative hypotheses and assumptions, and outline desiderata for further investigation. All this appears, in detail with appropriate bibliography, in a lengthy study by the speaker, and titled, "Sociolinguistics and New Perspectives in the Study of Southwest Spanish," scheduled for publication in a forthcoming volume of this 3 university's Studies in Languages and Linguistics. Foremost among the recommendations is that an effort be made to assemble and system- atize pertinent linguistic and social data relating to Southwest multilingualism and multiculturalism. Perhaps the best repository for this would be the International Center for Research on Bilingualism, at Laval 3 University, Quebec, headed by William Mackey, and which is equipped with modern electronic information retrieval facilities. Approp- riately, Di Pietro in his useful review of studies and desiderata in bilingualism in the Americas observes that: "A systematic class- ification is needed of the information that has been gathered.At 4 present it is scattered about in places that are often inaccessible." Another concern of the Project has been to seeka more exact description of the multilingualism of the area without becoming inextricably mired in theoretical disputes raging in our field. It is a fact that both psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics have developed at such a pace during the past two decades that to keep abreast of the often vying new formulations and the re-evaluations of older concepts becomes a most challenging task. Bright, attempting to transmit a sense of its multi-faceted nature ascribes to socio- 5 linguistics seven dimensions, any two or more of which may converge. The current ferment within the study of linguistic diversity and the level of sophistication reached, almost makes of the traditional dialect geographer, working with meager resources, a primitive figure. The fact is that until recently bilingualism was a marginal study, despite which a great deal of valuable research data was gathered. It is almost impossible to study the varieties of language in the American Southwest without reference to the historical evolution of the study of multilingualism.Modern pioneers have included such figures as Haugen with his monumental studies of Norwegian as an immigrant language in the United States, and his Bilingualism in the Americas, perhaps unparalleled in showing, with remarkable brevity, 4 the interrelatedness of so many disciplinas impingingupon this 6 phenomenon, Weinreich, particule7ly in Languages in Contact, sig- nalled a more dynamic treatment of multilingual speechcommunities 7 as interacting rather than detached entities. Attitudinal and other psychological and societal factors including "language loyalty"were given unprecedented weighting in their influence bothupon the "dominance configuration" and linguistic interference. Thanks to such insights and the recent interest in contrastive analysis studies, 8 such as those carried out by Bowen, Stockwell and Martin, interference is no longer regarded as a unidirectional simplisticprocess. It is possible to mention only a few of the refinements that have been developed in the study of the regions of the worldwhose populations speak more than one language. Ferguson coined the term diglossia for countries where two well differentiated varieties of the same language, one formal and hence "high" in prestige, the other 9 informal and "low", are in use, although by now its meaning has been extended. A great deal of attention has been paid to "code-switching," both in the native and foreign language contexts, and involving changes 10 of levels, styles, dialects or languages. Gumperz, who has also introduced the term "repertoire" for a variety of a given language, has done extensive study on the conditions governing code-switching 11 among smaller ethnic groups in a linguistically diverse country. Labov has attempted to quantify divergent languageuse and social affiliation by employing linguisticvariables.12 5 The categorization of linguistically diverse speech communities has advanced considerably. Stewart has developed a taxonomic class- ification of languages according to their functions ina given 13 country. Kloss has classified multilingual communities with special reference to official policy toward minorities by sovereign states throughout the world. Of particular interest is his classification of speakers of foreign languages in America into four groups: 1) Sole first settlers2) Co-first settlers3)Sole immigrants 14 4) Co-immigrants. Significantly, however, no universal consensus exists on these matters.A striking example of this is seen in the denial by Rona, a distinguished Uruguayan scholar, that the distri- butive use of Spanish and Guarani by Paraguay, usually considered 15 the bilingual nation par excellence, actually constitutes bilingualism. In this connection, a very recent book by Joan Rubin, titled National Bilingualism in Paraguay, furnishes a model for researchers of language contact studies performed according to modern methodology and presented 16 with lucidity. A vast range of sociolinguistic implications have been probed by Fishman, who has been particularly interested in elaborating a hierarchial set of sociological constructs relating language choice 17 behavior to specific domains of human interaction. He has also coined the term "ethnicity" which attempts to describe the degree 18 of affiliation to often competing ethnic groups. In Language Loyalty in the United States some half-dozen immigrant speech comm- unities are examined as this and other concepts relate to them. Bilingualism in the Barrio edited by Fishman, Cooper